My car insurance exposed my location

Re:My car insurance exposed my location by kevin_thibedeau on Saturday December 09, 2017 @11:09AM (#15886384)

Unless there has been some new innovation in this space, the OBD behavior trackers are just accelerometers. The typical placement down in the driver's footwell makes GPS too unreliable to bother with. The GPS correlation comes from being foolish enough to install their app.

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Re:My car insurance exposed my location by danepowell on Saturday December 09, 2017 @11:23AM (#15886441)

There are many insurance companies that use OBD GPS trackers, as well as standalone trackers that plug in to the cigarette lighter, in order to charge based on mileage.

e.g. https://www.metromile.com/

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Re:My car insurance exposed my location by smt88 on Saturday December 09, 2017 @11:35AM (#15886516)

They don't work well. I deal with them at work. The data is terrible.

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Re:My car insurance exposed my location by Ekkus on Saturday December 09, 2017 @11:17AM (#15886413)

What about wifi and cell networks? I've never looked into these devices, but surely that would be an easy way to get the general location of most cars.

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Re:My car insurance exposed my location by kevin_thibedeau on Saturday December 09, 2017 @11:23AM (#15886446)

Its certainly possible but these things are built to be dirt cheap.

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Re:My car insurance exposed my location by cptskippy on Saturday December 09, 2017 @11:23AM (#15886443)

I figured that they would use an app on your phone for GPS, accelerometer data, and gyro. The OBD adapter would just pull things like speed and be used to recognize that you're driving.

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Re:My car insurance exposed my location by spdustin on Saturday December 09, 2017 @11:41AM (#15886549)

The Zubie receives GPS just fine.

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